


Chess

by miranda_wave (miranda_askher)



Series: Colors [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, F/M, Gen, black - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 21:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miranda_askher/pseuds/miranda_wave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think you know what she's about. You don't. He might.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chess

She could tell you some wild stories about things she’s seen in her work. Truly crazy things, really. You probably wouldn’t believe her.

But it doesn’t matter. It would be kissing and telling, so to speak, and a good secret agent doesn’t kiss and tell. 

An amusing analogy, in her particular case.

If you met her, assuming you paid her any attention at all, you wouldn’t think she’d remember you. Glued to her Blackberry, with her immaculate clothes and not a hair out of place, she is professionally nonthreatening--a high-end personal assistant by appearance. 

Most people are too distracted by her frighteningly clever boss to understand that she is, in fact, professionally devious, and that her actual job is to see and remember all the things people do when they believe no one is watching.

It’s a good system--classic, simple, really only one step removed from the old good-cop-bad-cop scenario. She will politely escort you, because you are of interest, to a meeting with the most subtly terrifying man on earth, and quietly take you home again. You’ll never expect her to be the one collecting most of the information. Her employer simply raises the topics he wants you to sweat over, and trusts her to gather what she needs: watching reactions, body language, listening to what you say later. You can ignore her, interrogate her (unsuccessfully, of course), rage at her, and even try to cry on her shoulder. You’ll learn nothing from her, but generally, once her sleek dark car drops you off, she can plot your moves, four or five ahead.

She always has been rather good at chess, especially if her opponent draws white. She prefers an advantage of data to an edge in speed.

It’s an elegant system that she and her employer have, one that is almost always successful. Naturally Mr. Sherlock Holmes is an exception--but then he probably learned this trick in infancy. As he put it the first time he stepped into her car, “Mycroft’s got you collecting dirt for him, I see...well, don’t worry about failing with me. I do know the grift; he had to have _someone_ help him when he was in primary school.” Which, admittedly, unsettled her at first--but she has learned quickly that allowing herself to be unsettled by the younger Mr. Holmes will merely create a constant distraction.

You will not unsettle her. Few other people have.

Oddly, Dr. Watson is one of her most surprising marks. Not simply because he asks her out--although that is new, and rather funny, considering--or even because he is clearly at least as brassed off as he is frightened by his impromptu abduction (and she had thought they’d rather outdone themselves this time with the intimidating dramatics). No, the odd thing is that he hasn’t the least compunction about using her as a car service to visit his dreary bedsit and calmly liberate his highly illegal service weapon, despite the fact that he has no particular intention of using it. Which, she thinks, is not to say that he absolutely won’t.

When she reports this later, her employer quirks his mouth in his inscrutable way and lets out a funny little sigh that clearly says _pleased_. She is not at all pleased by this unpredictability. Nor is she thrilled when they receive word--and after Mr. Holmes and his distractable assistant Anthea have turned back into Mycroft and a quiet nameless private citizen for the evening--that the good doctor has probably shot someone to save the other least predictable man in London.

You may be a pedestrian opponent, but this time she hasn’t drawn black. It is time to reassess the game.


End file.
